KENNELLY HANDILY WINS EIGHTH TERM AGAINST LITTLE- KNOWN SLEATH

Kent Sleath posted himself outside a Glastonbury polling place Tuesday morning so his hometown voters would have him in mind as they cast their votes for U.S. representative.

Wearing a Sleath for Congress sweat shirt and baseball cap, he stopped voters and asked for their support.

"Oh, are you Paul Munns?" one voter asked, overlooking the shirt and cap for a stark blue and white sticker Sleath was wearing in support of Manchester's Republican state senator.

So went that encounter, and so went the race.

U.S. Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly handily won an eighth term, capturing about 74 percent of the vote in the 20-town district, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2-to-1, according to unofficial returns.With all but a handful of votes counted, Sleath had 25 percent and John F. Forry, Concerned Citizens party, took 1 percent.

At her home on Scarborough Street in Hartford, Kennelly celebrated her success with about 100 supporters -- some of them Republicans -- and campaign workers. It was the first time in her career as a politician that she waited downstairs among friends for results to come in rather than retreating to her bedroom. Family members said she never takes any election for granted, but this year early polls forecast a solid victory.

"People in the 1st Congressional District have been so supportive of me," she said, standing on a table. "I know them and they know me and they want me to represent them in the 105th Congress."

Friends remembered Kennelly's late husband, James Kennelly, who died last year. "Speaker Kennelly and Chairman [John] Bailey are celebrating another great victory for Barbara in heaven tonight," U.S. Sen. I. Joseph Lieberman said of Kennelly's husband, state speaker of the House, and her father, state and national Democratic chairman. "The best is yet to come."

Supporters have long suggested Kennelly run for governor. She consistently declines to look beyond the race at hand.

Tuesday, with the election locked up, the answer was no different.

"I get paid a lot of money to be in Congress," she said with a laugh. "Best I do that for now."

The scene at Republican headquarters in Glastonbury, meanwhile, was less celebratory as Sleath lost each of his hometown's eight districts by ratios of almost 2- to-1.

Earlier in the day, Sleath had cited Kennelly's superior fund-raising abilities and the exposure that bought her with campaign ads on television.

That was the story of Sleath's struggle to unseat one of the nation's congressional giants with a $6,000 budget and less than four months to campaign.

"Barbara Kennelly doesn't have to wear a shirt with her name on it," Sleath said.